How do you “redirect” a dementia patient who wants to “go home” or speak to someone who is no longer alive? How do you respond to a loved one who is living in a reality which isn’t yours? Here are a few tips that I posted yesterday on Defeat Dementia, a Facebook group which provides information and support to caregivers of dementia patients:

• Don’t worry about convincing her that her loved one has already passed away, but to pay attention to the emotion she is expressing.

• Sometimes it is helpful to encourage the patient to talk about her loved one. Try questions like “what did you do with your (mom) when you were little?”, “What do you want to say to your (mom)?”

• Perhaps having a photo of her loved one available that you can look at together, ask her to tell a story about her loved one, might be strategies that would satisfy her.

• If necessary, some caregivers have tried a white lie, like “Your (mother) lives someplace else now.” or “I can’t take you there today. Maybe tomorrow.”

• It’s helpful to try to stay in the patient’s reality, and the death of her loved one is no longer a part of her reality, so saying her (mother) is dead only confuses her.

New research at Genentech provides a provocative theory about the cause of Alzheimer’s disease and suggests potential new targets for therapies to treat it, reports Ron Winslow in the February 19 issue of the Wall Street Journal.

The prevailing view about what causes Alzheimer’s disease is that deposits called beta amyloid accumulate in the brain, destroying nerve cells and ultimately, the patient’s memory. Now, new research shows there’s a very different way of looking at the disease.

The Genentech/Salk Institute team of researchers propose that a normal process in which excess nerve cells and nerve fibers are pruned from the brain during prenatal development is somehow reactivated in the adult brain and “hijacked” to cause the death of such cells in Alzheimer’s patients, writes Winslow.

According to Marc Tessier-Lavigne, executive vice president, research drug discovery at Genentech, the new findings offer evidence that “Alzheimer’s is not just bad luck, but rather it is the activation of a pathway that is there for development purposes.”

Genentech has identified potential drug candidates based on the findings and says that it may take many years for any potential treatment to be developed.

A new approach to delivering gene therapy to the brain to treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, was revealed in research findings published in the February 4 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

UCSF neuroscientist Dr. Krystof Bankiewicz has developed a promising way to get nerve cells to help disperse gene therapy to targeted brain cells. He uses a technique called convection-enhanced delivery. The fluid containing the gene therapy is injected under pressure, delivered in pulses. Says Bankiewicz:

For the first time, specific regions of the cortex can be supplied with therapeutic agents by targeting defined regions of the thalamus…Translational experiments now are in progress to evaluate the potential of this unique gene delivery technology for the treatment of cortical dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease…

Bankiewicz’s research at UCSF has a strong focus on the development of practical approaches to gene and cell replacement therapies; he synthesizes several individual technologies into powerful new approaches to the treatment of such serious disease as brain cancer and neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson’s disease.

I am sad to report that Internet industry legend Mike Homer has died today of CJD. This news was first reported this evening by Kara Swisher in her BoomTown blog. Kara writes:

We all liked Mike. In fact, we all loved the pugnacious, energetic and restlessly entrepreneurial Silicon Valley exec.

Sadly for those who knew him, Mike Homer died today at his home surrounded by family and friends, after a long battle with a severe illness. He was 50.

Homer is survived by his wife, Kristina, and three young children: James, Jack and Lucy.

His funeral is at Saint Raymond’s Catholic Church in Menlo Park on Thursday.

In 2007, Homer was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

A rare, neurodegenerative “prion” disease, which in Homer’s case has occurred sporadically rather than via infection (the well-known variant that occurs in animals is called mad cow disease), CJD’s incidence is one case in a million annually, and few survive beyond a year after exhibiting symptoms.

His illness inspired his family and many friends to find treatments and a cure for the cruel disease and include the man–Dr. Stanley Prusiner–who won the Nobel Prize in 1997 for discovering prions, infectious agents that are at the heart of CJD.

Mike Homer was treated by specialists from UCSF. Homer’s fight made a tremendous impact on those who have been researching this devastating disease and raising public awareness about this and other forms of dementia.

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Chade-Meng Tan speaks of everyday compassion at Google which he calls “Search Inside Yourself.” According to Meng compassion works in 3 steps: attention training, self-knowledge and spreading happiness.